i’m totally the david copperfield of iraq

The first time I deployed in support of OIF, Americans were still fairly novel creatures to the regular “Joe Iraqi” townsfolk, as were our beardless faces, our cargo pants, and–most intriguing–our sunglasses.

On one of the two trips I took “outside the wire” while there (both unauthorized), I saw firsthand the perception they had about our sunglasses; before that day, I’d heard rumors about this belief only:

Iraqis think our sunglasses allow us to have x-ray vision.

At least, they thought that in 2003, when we first arrived. So, on June 7, 2003, when I went into a local village to eat a meal that wasn’t packaged 20 years ago, I was bum rushed by a group of middle-aged men who wanted to borrow my sunglasses. I told them (at least 3 times) that my sunglasses were not magic and that they did not give me x-ray vision.

“Her” was a 19-year-old redheaded medic from outside Little Rock; her name was Lacy. According to the list tacked inside the plywood door to our outhouse, she was the #2 most attractive female soldier working at the Combat Support Hospital.

Me (shouting): “There’s no need to bother, she ain’t wearing any panties!”

This made the server blush and the group of male restaurant patrons laugh hystercially. Most importantly, they left me the hell alone long enough to finish my meal.
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19 responses to “i’m totally the david copperfield of iraq”

I wanted x-ray vision glasses SO bad when I was a kid. And I never ever thought of having it stop at the panties. Sheesh, what would be the point of good x-ray possibilities if you stopped at the damn BORDER?!

With those thoughts now back to life in my head, I suppose I should stop by Father Muskrat’s confessional on Friday.

How do you say ‘dirty bastard’ in Arabic/Farsi/Kurdish/whatever?
Went skiing today and my girlfriend ate shit, tore her rotator cuff etc. There was boob outline on her x-ray. Don’t worry I pointed it out.

I always categorized x-ray glasses with sea monkeys: back-of-comc-book-money-scams. THEN, I was given sea monkeys and watched them grow. Then they had a bunch of babies. I was so excited because this made the things found in the back of comic books more legit in my eyes. Then I realized the birth of the sea monkey babies made me a grandma so I stopped feeding them. [ok, not really. I fed them but they all died anyway]

I’m holding out hope that x-ray glasses are legit.

Thank you for using David Copperfield in your title. If you had used Criss Angel, I might have had to do something drastic.

I was kinda worried when you said war story and funny in the same sentence, especially since you were actually in Iraq. Glad there were some moments that could make a fella laugh over there
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